Acrobat freezes when printing to Adobe PDF

Same issue on Windows 11.  Different solution.  After all other troubleshooting efforts failed, the AcroCleaner worked!  

Step 1.   Uninstall Acrobat

Step 2.  Run the Adobe AcroCleaner Tool (https://www.adobe.com/devnet-docs/acrobatetk/tools/Labs/cleaner.html)

Step 3.  Reboot computer

Step 4.  Reinstall Acrobat

Step 5.  Print a test PDF!

Hope this helps. 

Since I ran into the same problem with Adobe Acrobat X Pro (on Windows 10), what @PositronicTanner said, actually helped, but it seems I had to ensure, that no document information (what you see in "document name") is written into the file, because else it seemed to have trouble with Unicode (my guess as a software developer). I think this, because printing a test page to a PDF worked just fine.

I was experiencing similar symptoms as described by OP with the exception that I was able to close the "Creating Adobe PDF" dialog by clicking the close button ("X") for the dialog box. Additionally, in my case the print jobs were stuck in the print spooler and couldn't be cancelled and deleted from there using the options available in the print queue dialog (but they could be deleted by stopping the spooler service and manually deleting the items in the print queue).

An additional symptom (that I later found was related to this issue) is that I was unable to scan to PDF using my Fujitsu ScanSnap ix500 scanner. At the point in the scanning process when the PDF would usually be rendered, the ScanSnap software returned a "Failed to communicate with the ScanSnap" error box and the PDF was not created.

I'm running Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit.

I tried (to no avail):

• uninstalling/reinstalling acrobat and then updating acrobat
• SFC /scannow (reported no issues)
• Uninstalling/reinstalling ScanSnap Manager software (re-installed with no issues)
• Deleting and manually installing the Adobe PDF Printer
• Changing drivers for the Adobe PDF printer
• Screaming
• Crying

Ultimately, what put me on the right path (and there is NO NEED for others to do this) is installing a different PDF rendering software (trial version) which ALSO returned an error when attempting to render the PDF using the Print to PDF function.   However, that error was one that was documented on the support pages for that software and one of the possible fixes that was recommended ended up solving this issue for me.

(there were a NUMBER of things I tried based on those support pages before discovering the below, which I've omitted)

It was the Windows 7 "Disk Cleanup" tool.  Specifically, it was the "Temporary Files" that needed to be cleaned up.   Clearing the Temporary Files MAY cause other issues, so use caution and backup accordingly before trying this.  In my case it (seemed to ) force a Windows update that wouldn't complete until shutting the computer off during the update that was "stuck" on 100% and subsequently booting into safe mode with networking and then rebooting again.   However, immediately after clearing the Temporary Files the print to PDF issue went away.  It also continued to work after the aforementioned reboots.

I still don't know what the precise issue was, but it SEEMED to be related to a Windows User Access permissioning for files within that Temp folder that were cleared out when I ran Disk Cleanup.

I hope this helps someone else because dealing with this issue was incredibly frustrating!

Hi kenlotterman,

Could you please try below mention steps and see if that changes this behavior:

1- Check for Updates, launch Acrobat>click Help>then select Check for Updates

2- If installing updates doesn't work, try to change following setting- launch Acrobat>select Edit menu>click Security(Enhanced)>uncheck the box next to Enable Protected Mode at startup>then click OK.

Relaunch Acrobat and then try to print.

Please note: Disabling Protected Mode is for troubleshooting purpose only, and not recommended. Please turn the feature back on after troubleshooting is complete.

In addition to that, let me know the version of Acrobat installed on your computer?

Which Operating System is installed on the machine?